Oral history and information technology: Human voices of assessment

Abstract

Dramatic advances in technology for acquiring, managing, and sharing information promise to reshape the workplace by eliciting new behaviors and introducing new organizational patterns. For academic medical centers, the integration of information technology into programs of education, research, and patient care is essential for increased organizational effectiveness. At Baylor College of Medicine, we have developed information‐sharing and management tools, collectively called the Virtual Notebook System (VNS). The VNS is a multiuser, workstation‐based hypermedia system that serves as a technologically extended analog of the laboratory notebook used in biomedical research. We are deploying the VNS in scientific groups at Baylor, and are applying oral history techniques to assess its impact. This article shows how oral history captures the “human voices”; of Baylor's experience and helps us understand the effects of information technology on the processes of biomedical research.